Is Labor ‘gaslighting the Australian public’? Readers weigh in

Richard Ruffin writes: I think Joshi’s article about Labor being tactical fatalists can also be described as Labor “gaslighting the Australian public”. The prime minister said on a recent visit to South Australia: “The thing is that climate change is real and we need to respond to it. And we need, I think, to respond to it across the board. That’s why my government has a comprehensive plan to deal with climate change.”

What a misnomer the “comprehensive plan” is when Labor has approved the North West Shelf extension, shonky carbon offsets and ignored climate science.

Peter M writes: I don’t see this to be as catastrophic as everyone seems to be making it out to be. We are in a renewables transition, but we still need to keep the lights on while we get to the desired destination.

China is a good example. It is building massive renewable energy resources and trialling innovative new ways of achieving its climate change goals. But it is also still building fossil-fueled energy as it realises that energy demand will still accelerate and not stop while the transition to cleaner energy continues.

If we are pig-headed and try to continue the transition while not supplementing our energy (in the short to medium term) with some form of fossil-fueled energy, all the while simply hoping that blackouts won’t occur and energy demands do not increase, we are destined to fail.

Nick Thurn writes: The evidence is that it is very easy to annoy the electorate by acting to reduce fossil demand. The electorate is more comfortable with minor tweaks than big changes. But it’s worse than that.

We don’t have an understandable existential threat to deal with (like low-lying countries), and we are an urban consumer society where, as individuals, we can only mitigate a maximum of 20% or less of our emissions. Beyond that, we are, with pretty much everyone else on the planet, simply bystanders compared to China and the USA and their massive emissions and excessive consumption.

We aren’t even taking the Norway path and nationally benefiting from selling all this gas and coal. We’re pretty much giving it away.

The key point is we had not one, but two PMs defenestrated after daring to challenge the fossil fuel industry.

This “climate fatalism” is a bit like the other fatalisms concerning inequality, disinformation and the outsized influence of certain lobby groups. There’s a very large, very well-funded machine acting against anyone stepping out of line with the status quo.

Short of a nuclear war or a black death-style fatality pandemic, we are on the path we are on with only chaos and collapse to look forward to (albeit some number of election cycles in the future).

On the plus side, demographic collapse is on the way — sadly, we won’t shrink to a sustainable global population until the climate has been pushed well into uncharted territory.

Ben Rose writes: Yes, “tactical fatalism” is one term; I call it “greed-motivated hypocrisy”.

More public education is needed. Labor doesn’t seem to want to, so we need to keep pressuring them and others with deep pockets (for example, Twiggy Forrest) to make the public aware of the world’s “climate-hell future” for our grandkids.

Problem is, Labor is too spineless to make Australia lead the rest of the world on this. That is what it will take though, because the US and Russia are morally bankrupt, as are the Arab oil and gas states. We will have to be the first to say “no more coal and gas” from Australia because we are extremely vulnerable to global heating.

David P writes: I wonder if it is a politically (and even legally) viable option to just leave this gas in the ground? Firstly, I presume Woodside and the government have paid quite a lot on proving this resource (drilling, seismic surveys, etc). If the government just said no, what would the consequences be?

Also, if our trading partners were facing a shortage of gas in the future, I would think Australia could come under a lot of pressure to open up that field.

Paul Johanson writes: As has been pointed out by yourselves and others, crazed conservatives make terrible administrators. Which always seems to surprise voters after the election, when they realise a functioning, well-run government is actually good for the economy and the people.

What amazes me is that Trump and his cronies are surprised by this, again. They’ve had four years of experience “governing” before. And yet here they are, assuming they can do whatever they want and the apparatus of government and judiciary will just bend to their will. Elon is an amazing example of this — he really thought he could just rip through the entire government bureaucracy and slash costs and jobs in a matter of weeks. The Clinton administration actually did reform the government; they eliminated hundreds of thousands of jobs and closed some 800 agencies, but they did it over two terms and through careful consideration.

And, horribly, the enforcement agencies seem to have taken on their new roles with some glee. I can see cases making their way through the courts for years to come, where agents will claim loudly that they were “just following orders”.